ON THE WAY FROM THE CHEMISTRY LAB to the nurse’s office, Niko threw discrete, albeit slightly lecherous, sidelong glances at Arianne. The different hues of her hair fascinated him—an angry mob of red, orange, and gold strands. They reminded him of the flames he’d stared into earlier that morning. And her eyes—the ocean on a clear day couldn’t compete. So open and so clear, he could almost see forever in their depths. He asked himself over and over why he’d only met the exquisite creature walking by his side now after all his years living in Blackwood. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts aloud like an untested youth until Arianne’s lilting voice had every fiber of his being focused on her.
“Exquisite?” she asked, lips twisted. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty plain.” She indicated her shirt and jeans with a sweep of her hands. “Not exactly someone you’d notice. Not like Darla. All that polish. All that sophistication.”
She’d relaxed around him considerably. Moments earlier, he’d expected her to leap out of her skin if he so much as stared at her too long. She reminded him of a wary doe. And as much as he wouldn’t care to admit it, he represented the hunter. He loosened up his suddenly tense shoulders. Pouncing on her is out of the question, he scolded himself. You’re a gentleman for Christ’s sake!
“I apologize.” He scratched his cheek. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. In fact, I didn’t mean to ask that question out loud.” He looked at her fully. “Don’t sell yourself short. Exquisite is the proper word. Like fine wine you didn’t know you had in your cellar until years later, after it has aged to perfection.”
“What do you know about wine?”
He studied her until she blushed, ignoring her question and asking one of his own. “What do you mean by ‘not someone you’d notice’? Are you saying everyone in school or just me?”
She hummed a quick syllable that sounded like the letter M. The urge to take her into his arms blindsided him into missing a step. He pretended to search for the imaginary pebble that tripped him when what she said next provided a fitting distraction to patch up his cracked composure.
“You only realized I existed because our partners got called away. That’s what I mean by being someone you wouldn’t notice. But, I’m not surprised since I don’t hang around much, and I’m not part of any groups. I don’t even know half the students in Blackwood High. You probably know all the students since you’re part of the popular group.” She tapped her cheek. “Well, maybe all of them except for me.”
Niko considered the logic of her explanation. Could it really be plausible not to meet someone he’d been classmates with all these years? Even through a quirky twist of fate? The answer slipped from his grasp. He let the matter rest only because he found her utterly charming, in an awkward sort of way. She blushed from head to toe every time their hands brushed against each other as they walked.
“What does Darla have to do with anything?” he followed up, selfishly wanting to keep her talking.
She shrugged—a small movement of her delicate shoulders. “You’re always around her.”
“We’re friends. Naturally, we’d be seen together.”
“Don’t you find her beautiful? Everyone in school does.”
“I thought you didn’t know everyone in this school?”
She laughed. It held such clarity—so sweet to the ear that it took his breath away. His legs refused to move. She captured his gaze completely, and he feared even more that he couldn’t help himself. He knew without a doubt that he needed to make her laugh again. He had to hear that sound.
“Is something wrong?” She stopped and faced him. Worry found a home in the lines of her forehead.
He picked his jaw off the floor, swallowed, and said, “Exquisite. Truly.”
Arianne dropped her gaze and held her hands behind her back as if she hid a gift. “I’m not used to being complimented,” she whispered.
Driven by the impulse to make her feel comfortable again, he came to her side and smiled reassuringly. “Why don’t we keep going then?”
“Right.”
They made a left at the end of the hall. Niko mentally slapped himself in a vain attempt to concentrate on the task at hand: escorting her to the nurse for an ice pack. She needed to cool down her acid burn before it decided to swell. But he soon realized the futility of concentrating on other things like putting one foot in front of the other. His stubborn eyes wouldn’t listen to reason, they kept returning to her. Unexpected warmth suffused his chest when she graced him with one of those shy smiles.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you speak funny,” she said.
Niko’s eyebrows came together. “How so?”
She blushed. “You’re so formal.”
“Oh.” A lightness inflated his chest. He felt his cheeks burn. “I guess it’s how I was brought up,” he said.
“I’m sorry.” She waved both her hands at him. “I didn’t mean to make you feel weird..”
“No.” He laughed. “Desmond teases me about it all the time. I can’t seem to break the habit, I guess.”
“No worries.” She smiled. “I like it actually. Sounds different. A good kind of different.”
Niko scratched his still red cheek. He had no idea how to respond to her words. He’d been complimented countless times, but they all sounded hollow to his ears until today. He liked that she liked the way he spoke. Another strange feeling he added to his already growing collection.
“You don’t have to, you know,” she said after a few more steps.
“Pardon?”
She averted her gaze to the deserted, locker-lined hallway. “Walk me to the nurse’s office. It’s not like I’ll faint. I’m not exactly bleeding or anything.”
Another grin played on his lips. Another unsettling activity since it came so naturally in her presence. The air around her seemed lighter, easier to breathe in, taking him to heights no narcotics could achieve. “As your lab partner for the day, I feel it’s my responsibility to make sure you’re taken care of. What would your friend…what’s her name?”
“Tammy,” she provided.
“Yes, Tammy.” He cleared his throat. “What would Tammy think when she returned to find I’d left you in less than perfect condition?”
The pink tint on her cheeks made him want to trace circles on her skin with his thumb.
“Thanks,” she said. “I should’ve been paying attention to what I was doing. chemistry has the tendency to bring out the klutz in me. Normally, I don’t spaz out, but when the experiments begin, I become an accident waiting to happen.” She poked at the redness of her hand and sighed. “Tammy always handled the more dangerous stuff in class. In terms of the experiments, I mean. Mr. Todd never seemed to mind. One time, I almost passed out from inhaling fumes. She made sure I didn’t. And this other time…oh, I’m sorry. I’m babbling.”
“Not at all. Please keep talking. I like listening to your voice.”
“My voice?”
“It’s like a stream through the forest, clear and refreshing to the ears.”
She studied him with those big, sea-blue eyes. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but can I ask you something personal?”
A red alert sounded. His guards went up automatically. On autopilot, he kept his expression neutral when he replied, “You may.”
She played with the hem of her T-shirt. “It’s just,” she began, “you look tired today. Are you feeling okay?”
His heart fled the country. An urgency bordering on panic filled him. What does she know? What could she know? His chest imploded. He decidedly didn’t like the heat that crawled up from his neck to his face. He had to fight to maintain the illusion of breathing normally. He shoved away his paranoid thoughts. Of course she didn’t know anything. How could she?
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. You just look like you haven’t slept, that’s all. I’ve never seen you look this tired before. Not that I look at you all the time. Far from it.” She huffed. “Again with the babbling. Anyway, are you coming down with something?”
The speed in which she spoke had Niko laughing in seconds. His defenses had gone from severe red alert to low green in record time. The nerves and panic vanished like a plane above the Bermuda triangle. He hugged himself and bent over, laugh after laugh queuing to be heard.
“What’s so funny?” Arianne sounded distinctly disgruntled.
Niko straightened and took a deep, calming breath. Someone must have tied balloons to his shoulders. He felt helium light. “You’re concerned about me when you’re the one with acid burn on your hand?”
Her magenta blush made him want to…what? He caught himself. He wanted to do what exactly? He heard the gentleman in him leave the room. A bomb had exploded in his head, and in the rubble laid shattered pieces of his common sense. What was wrong with him?
“Come on—” he motioned for her to follow “—your hand needs that cold compress.”
And I need a cold shower.
At the cafeteria, during lunch, Niko sat with Darla and her underlings. He’d forgotten the reason why he’d chosen her crowd—certainly not for the riveting conversation of who kissed whom the previous weekend or which sequined top they had to purchase. That day, Darla droned on about an upcoming dance, an activity Niko found tedious and inane. He tuned her out when the word “committee” came out of her mouth. He’d found something better to focus on.
Arianne sat at a corner table with a baseball-capped boy. After making sure Mrs. Preston—the school nurse—had applied a cold compress on Arianne’s hand, Niko had decided to return to class to salvage the rest of their experiment. He rationalized his leaving the clinic as having an A average to maintain. Yet every step he took away from her felt like a rubber band being stretched to its limit—him on one end and her at the other.
Her presence reeled him in once he’d noticed her leaving the lunch line. Nothing else could seem more fascinating than watching her skewer a piece of fruit and place it into her mouth. He had to steer the ship of his adolescent thoughts away from the iceberg that could potentially embarrass him in front of so many people. On second thought, I wouldn’t mind slamming into an iceberg right about now.
The boy to Arianne’s left leaned in and spoke. She laughed and nudged him. He laughed with her. Their smiling faces and the loving glow that surrounded them had Niko making a fist.
“Man, what’re you doing?”
Niko tore his gaze away from Arianne to look at the boy who sat next to him. “Pardon?”
Desmond grinned, his white teeth a startling contrast to his café mocha complexion. His chocolate eyes sparkled with mischief. “I think you just killed your soda.”
The other boys at the table cackled, watching the girls shriek as they pushed their seats back in an attempt get away from the brown, fizzy sea Niko had created.
“Watch it, Niko.” Darla grabbed napkins and dabbed at the spilled soda. “This is a brand new cardigan. Not that you won’t buy me a new one if it got ruined, but still. I’d like to hang on to this one for a while.”
“My apologies.” Niko relaxed the vise grip that held the can and blinked impotently at what he’d done. “I don’t know what came over me.”
The boys being no help at all, the girls tag-teamed the rest of the spill and chucked the soaked napkins into the nearest bin, mumbling something about how chivalry had been dead a long time. When they sat down again, they resumed planning the dance like busy buzzing bees.
“Here.” Desmond handed Niko a fresh napkin. “What’s with you?”
Niko wiped his hand clean then leaned closer to Desmond without removing his gaze from Arianne. “That boy sitting beside Arianne—”
“Ben Freeman,” Desmond cut him off. “He’s been friends with Ari since their sandbox days. Fairly decent guy. Great slugger.”
Niko had to dust off his file on baseball terminology. “So, he and Arianne—”
“That’s the thing, man. No one really knows. They look like they’re together, but their official stance is that they’re just friends. How’s that even possible? A guy and a girl—especially when said guy catches the eyes of the ladies and said girl is a total piece—can never really be ‘just friends.’” Desmond sandwiched the last two words in air quotes. “If you ask me, they’re totally getting it on.”
“Getting it on?” Another phrase he had to recall.
“Doing the nasty. Bumping in the night. Having wild, animalistic—Whoa! Hold on a minute, mister.” Desmond paused to gawk at Niko. “Are you trying to tell me you have the hots for Arianne Wilson?”
Niko slid lower into his seat. “What has you thinking that?”
“Niko, you know I’m your man, right? We’re brothers from another mother. But, dude, sometimes you’re just a little…” Desmond gestured with his hands as if he could pluck out the word from someone else.
“A little what?”
“Thick. Dense. Lead can be seen through better than you.” Again his perfect teeth emerged. “You know, like you have tunnel vision, or something.” He placed his hands on the sides of his eyes in an imitation of blinders. “Your locker was one away from hers last year, and yet, you didn’t notice her. What does that say about you?”
Disbelief clubbed him on the side of the head. Through his virtual concussion, he sifted through his memories from the year before and recalled nothing that had to do with her. “That’s impossible.”
“Niko,” Desmond said his name like a sigh. “In the years I’ve known you, not once have you shown any interest in a girl. Let alone someone like Arianne Wilson.”
“I notice girls.” His defense sounded hollow, even to his own ears.
“Yeah, and Darla’s a horse.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t want to be rude,” Darla interrupted, “but is our planning getting in the way of your little chat?” She glared at Niko. A graveyard hush swept over the table. The chill in her voice could freeze lava. “It’s bad enough you tune me out—and don’t even try to deny it—but seriously, you don’t have to be this disinterested.”
Niko narrowed his eyes at Darla for a millisecond before he graced her with a floodlight smile. “I believe a masquerade ball is a wonderful idea. It would bring some class to this little town,” he said with perfectly manufactured enthusiasm, reciting the last thing Darla said word for word before her interruption.
Fourth of July fireworks lit up Darla’s face. “You were actually listening to me?”
“Darla, I always listen to everything you have to say.” Niko reached across the table and gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“So…so, you think we should all go with the Masquerade Ball? Not the Haunted House Party?”
He let go of her hand and winked. “I think we should do anything you want to do. You’re the one with the best ideas.”
“I am?”
All the girls tittered their support. The boys—not dumb enough to contradict—volunteered to do all the heavy lifting.
“Then it’s settled,” Darla said as if she held a gavel in her hand.
Fatigue—the villain he’d been fighting against all day—hung on his shoulders like barbells. By the end of the school day, he could barely keep his eyes open. He stood at the top of the front steps, searching for his train of thought. It had left the station several hours ago. He couldn’t recall what he had to do next.
Kids scurried to and from the school. Some scrambling to attend whatever extra-curricular activity they’d joined at the beginning of year. Niko gave in to the temptation of kneading his eyelids. A slight pulse had begun to throb right in the middle of his forehead. A pillow. He wanted a pillow. And silk sheets. Better yet, his own bed—a four poster king with heavy velvet curtains that blocked out any form of light.
“Arianne, wait up.”
Hearing her name snapped him awake. He scanned the crowd and spotted that boy—Ben—running toward Arianne in his ever present baseball cap. She turned around and beamed.
Elation morphed into instant hatred toward the recipient of that smile. It almost knocked Niko over. He’d never come so close to bloody murder. It scared him, coming out of left field and slapping him in the face.
A target painted itself on Ben’s back after he handed Arianne a stuffed panda. She cuddled it to her chest. She rose on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on the boy’s cheek. Niko caught himself thinking that if he snapped his fingers the panda would disintegrate and Ben would find himself transported to the middle of the Sahara desert. Naked. With no food. Better yet, with man-eating camels after him. What? Man-eating camels?
Master. Sickleton’s voice echoed in his head, interrupting his plans.
What is it, Caretaker? he answered telepathically.
I apologize for the intrusion, but you are needed.
Niko closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he stood in the foyer of his home. Sickleton waited for him near a marble table with iron legs. His lurid Caretaker greeted him with a frown perfected after years of practice.
“What is it?”
“I would have preferred it if you took the bus,” Sickleton said under his breath. “What if you were seen?” This he said louder.
“Sickleton, I’m tired. I don’t have the time or the patience to explain to you the intricacies of instant teleportation. I would prefer that you cut to the chase so I can begin my duties.”
A black envelope with silver calligraphy appeared, floating above his open palm. “From your wide-eyed expression, I take it you had forgotten what day it is.”
Niko constructed a formidable façade on the outside. Inside, however, he mentally chided himself for forgetting. “Have the minions enforce the Certificates while I’m gone.”
“And the souls, sir?”
“Have them gathered in the basement. I’ll escort them for processing when I return.”
“It would be prudent to rest first after the gathering.”
“Where is this worry coming from? It is most unlike you.” Niko stood tall, shoulders squared. “Shall I put in a request for a change of Caretakers?”
Shaking his head like a child about to be whipped, Sickleton said, “No, sir. Please, sir.”
“See to it you keep your worries to yourself then. I can most certainly handle myself.”
“As you wish, Master.”
Niko made a fist and a scythe materialized. Its icy-blue, transparent blade curved menacingly over his head. Its flat had holes varying in diameter from the largest at the base to the smallest at the tip. Gripping the scythe’s smooth Blackwood staff, he tapped the floor once with the metal stud attached to the end of the shaft. A death bell tolled low and deep—solemn and desolate. Black flames burned away his clothing, replacing them with a coal suit, a silk shirt, a pencil tie, and leather dress shoes. Elevator doors rose from the floor in front of him. They dinged open, and he stepped through.